


freeing the end

by moreworldliness



Category: DreamSMP (Minecraft Series)
Genre: (probably), Backstory, Family History, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Listen I don't know what Ranboo wants to do with his character, Not Canon Compliant, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 09:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28468998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreworldliness/pseuds/moreworldliness
Summary: a world lay somewhere else, in the Above; Ranboo was sure of it.or:I realized that I wanted to have fun with the idea of Ranboo's backstory, so this is literally all headcanon fuck you I do what I want
Relationships: Ranboo & Clay | Dream
Comments: 8
Kudos: 198





	freeing the end

_1._

In his language, it meant “The Beginning”; “The Home”; “The Origin”; there were many translations for what was, in essence, a simple string of runes. A world where the happy muttering of stars didn’t exist, giant structures that housed crystals grew from the ground up to appease the great dragon, an island where it was only muttered that there were other islands like it in existence. Utterly isolated and alone, with nothing but a fathomless drop if you took a single wrong step off of the crumbling beige rocks that rested peacefully in the air that wasn’t there.

It was there he found himself, staring up at the tall kin around him, at home.

Their eyes matched his. His right hand; right arm, right leg, right everything; shared their dark tone, gradually marching onto the lighter side of his body with a purpose that none of them seemed aware of. Odd fruit was offered to him when his body ached with hunger, or thirst, and he found the pain ebbed away slowly as they muttered in crowds near the large pillars that held his sky up. All was normal; all was safe.

He was taken care of by an elder; the tallest of all of their kind, whose eyes gleamed in the dark world with calm ferocity, whose runes thundered against the sand in which they were scribbled. To try and translate the elder’s name was meaningless, for it didn’t have a meaning. Very little had meaning - and the smallest boy held meaning for the whole community.

The elder wrote runes into the young boy’s skin the moment he was created, echoing in a rough translation, in a rough story that had been all but forgotten; “Ranboo” - the dragon child.

Of course, the translation wasn’t accurate by any means; it was merely what the runes looked like as they were inscribed, as the crying of the young boy calmed when he met the eyes of others of his kind - his kind, yet not quite. 

Ranboo began finding idiosyncrasies in himself as early as 4 passings of the great dragon; his hands, that held things in their tiny palms, instead of floating just above them. The fact that he had hands at all. His feet, that ran and played with other smaller members of his family, and how they left prints carelessly in millennia of undisturbed rocks and rubble. His skin, and how half of it was much closer in hue to the ground he ran on, to a colour that he didn’t know, and how his hair followed much the same pattern. The fact that he had hair at all.

He didn’t have the words for the idiosyncrasies until he was 12.

But until then, all was safe. All was normal.

_2._

“Elder.”

Ranboo’s voice called out quietly in the room that housed him; purple bricks covered the ceiling with a strange feeling of claustrophobia that was never usually present in the stark emptiness called the Above. Many marvels lay there, untouched, Ranboo was sure. He watched each night for stars, and the day that the dragon passed, he watched for scales to fall from under its mighty wings. They glittered and danced under the light of the crystals, and caught an odd hope in Ranboo’s chest, a hunger that the fruit could not satiate.

The Elder turned from the entrance of the room, glancing back at its young subject, sat in the corner; bruises covered his legs from climbing and falling, scrapes patched up with mesh-like material that held itself to him like a magnet, clothes draping over him lightly. There was no need for warmth, and no need for breathable clothing, for temperature did not exist.

“What is it, dragon child?”

“What makes me different, Elder?”

A rumble came from somewhere in its torso as it ducked through the entrance once more, moving right beside Ranboo to take the other into its arms. There was safest: There was where stories were told.

“The difference between you and I, dragon child, is that you were blessed with a different body. Blessed by the dragon you’re named after to hold, and to run, to retain memories and collect them in your head with hands you cannot see. You were blessed into my care, and you were blessed by the world where the sky is not dark, but shining with brilliance like the crystals that keep us safe. 

A long time ago, that world was ours too; a world inhabited by “people”. These people were like you - with hands that could hold, and love, and fight. Violence has long been passed around as taboo whispers, but the reality is that people fought to settle differences. We were the diplomats, and in return, we shared their world. We shared their light and creatures, fauna and flora, we shared their tongues and their knowledge. We were allies.”

If Ranboo shut his eyes tightly, perhaps he could see it; the brilliance of the crystals projected into the abyssal sky that hid wonders, the strange misshapen blobs of colours he had no awareness of running and playing as he did, the Elder talking to someone that looked like him in a tongue that he didn’t understand. If he shut his eyes too tightly, the illusion was lost, and wouldn’t return to the spaces between his eyelids.

“In our alliance, there came a middle ground; a group of people and our kin that intermingled and became one. These were people that came to this world, with us, and saw the great dragon for the first time - can you imagine, dragon child? Seeing those wings without the pillars around us?”

Once again, Ranboo focused, the image far clearer than the previous one: The great dragon shaking the ground as his kin and the people stood side by side, staring at it with fascination. No pillars obstructed their view, just the glittering of the scales as the dragon’s magnificent wings stretched open. Was it dark? Was it light? Was there anything there at all?

“The people that created the pillars were like you, child.”

Ranboo opened his eyes.

“That is the difference between you and I. You can create; eons ago, the things that keep us safe were designed and built by those with the same hands as you, and the same heart. The same soul, connecting all of you at once - that is the difference between you and I. And so they gained a name:

The Dragon People.

Of course, they didn’t have wings like our great dragon, but they appeased it when no-one else could. When the people’s response was violence and fear, and our minds failed to comprehend a response at all, the Dragon People saved us - and so will you, too, Dragon Child, save us all one day. That is the difference between you and I.”

From somewhere, Ranboo could hear the chattering of voices that suddenly seemed so foreign, the world around him caving in for one unknowable second, the shaking of the ground as something dark barreled towards his vision--

And then he was twelve again, placed softly on the purple bricks that created an uncomfortable sense of claustrophobia that the Above did not mimic. The stories were over - the ground returned.

“Elder?”

“Yes?”

“Where are the Dragon People now?”

A hunger that the fruit could not satiate grew that day, the Grey Fountain that stood proudly in the center of their island feeding into the growing void in his chest.

“They are within you. Always.”

_3._

Books had become somewhat of an addiction; Ranboo had found them scattered in the dirt close to the Grey Fountain from time to time, written in a language that he did not understand. A personal mystery for him to solve - words that followed patterns, sometimes following along with pictures. 

Deciphering was slow, but steady.

Runes lined up with the other letters when there were pictures, pronunciation butchered by foreign tongue - a “bow”, a “sword”, objects that were held in hands so similar to his. Objects that looked strong, and sturdy, and were used to cut, and fire. Objects Ranboo began replicating to the best of his ability, to try and hold them, and wield them as they were intended.

It never quite worked.

16 passings of the dragon had occurred by now - today was the 17th passing. There was always an odd buzz in the air on the days the dragon arrived; how could there not be? It was an ethereal creature that arrived on its obsidian pillars once in however long, observed, and then left; asserting itself over its domain, scales ablaze with dominance. Ranboo had used to be excited by its presence, but something recently had felt off.

It had felt .. agitated.

His hands felt rough and pained as he scoured the rubble around the Grey Fountain again, a day like any other. Books were scarce - he was beginning to believe that he’d dug them all up. No leatherbound pages, no mysterious words to fill the void in his hands, in his head - creation and the lack thereof, spinning in an endless spiral, searching for noises and images that made no sense to make sense of them.

A story that had already been penned; it surely couldn’t have been his own already. There was still so much time; perhaps that was truly the difference between Ranboo and this place, after all.

Time stalled, though momentarily, and something tugged his vision to the edge of the island, far in the distance. Inky waters writhed in confusion as something stood there, a silhouette with all the colour of the world he imagined through the folds in his mind. Small against his kind, with a stature not dissimilar to his own. Ranboo’s hands fluttered to his chest, checking his heart was still thundered as loud as he heard it.

The silhouette moved, chaos breaking from the tide. The dragon roared, though the sound held no bearing against the hundreds of thoughts that broke through his mental barrier. Ranboo rose slowly to his feet, barely moving as the sands of time parted in front of his eyes.

A person.

They approached, one rushed step at a time, leaving tracks carelessly in the millennia of unbroken ground and rubble; a quiver over their shoulder, a deep maroon, a bow held tightly in their hand. By their hip, a sword that glimmered with the blue he’d only seen in dreams. A worn, lived in green covered their body tightly, like trying to retain their heat, their face a blank porcelain slate. A mask? A mask.

Slowly it seemed, they weaved around the first pillar of obsidian, the beating of the dragon’s mighty wings rustling his hair as it swooped down against the brilliant colours of this new person. A person.

Ranboo wanted to protest. Hadn’t they been allies? Hadn’t they been friends? Why had it taken so long for people to come and find him? Why had it taken so long for people to come home? Were they coming home?

Where was home?

Where was he?

Arrows whistled through the air in response to the dragon’s defiant calls, joining in the cacophony of confused speech from the tall beings around him. Friends, family, entities he’d known for so long and yet not long enough - colours that had grown dull against his mind.

Were the things he’d imagined what this person saw on a day to day basis? Were the things he saw what this person dreamt of when they couldn’t sleep at night? Was he a figment of their imagination? Was this a story? What was their life?

Could he share it?

Chaos; intangible, unrealistic.

Yet, it clapped its hands with glee and dragged Ranboo’s attention by the collar, following every unmistakable movement that the green-clad person made. Every sword stroke, every arrow fire, every quiet choke of pain they made when thrown back in arcs in the sky. Attacking relentlessly, over and over again, reaching some ultimate goal with every slip in their feet. Chaos watched alongside his still body as the green mingled with red that had come from somewhere, resolve disappearing into the scuffs in the dirt where Ranboo had once played.

There was a moment of stillness. Calm. Had the person stopped moving on purpose? Were they stuck?

Ranboo watched as they pressed the blue sword into the ground, staggering to their feet - their feet, Ranboo observed, like him - and threw something familiar towards the Grey Fountain. Watched, as they disappeared, and reappeared again, mere feet away.

Ranboo watched as for the first time, he could see the person clearly as they stood, opposite ends of the Grey Fountain, opposite ends of space and time; colours so sharp and vibrant they were blinding, green that bound itself to the person’s body, red that fell from cuts, pulling the green away from them, a brilliant, dazzling white that covered their skin with a simple smile.

From behind the dazzling white, Ranboo felt their gaze.

And then they were gone just as fast as they came, fear burning into the tracks they’d left, gone into the wide abyss that pooled at the ever dry basin of unbreakable stone; colours leaving burns in Ranboo’s corneas in the space where their body had been.

A body. A person.

Something unknowable and wonderful, something that carried a warmth never felt before, creating sparks in the air where molecules suddenly collided. Arrowheads scattered the ground and pierced further than hands could, bows he’d only read about in his beloved books lay scattered, strange metal clothes left discarded.

Alien. Warm. A different world.

Silence.

A scream broke from his heart, filling the rest of his body with a rush of movement that he’d never felt before.

Both hands planted themselves firmly against the unbreakable rock, swinging his entire body into the sparkling void that had swallowed the person whole. Nothing rushed past but the passing of time, a mere three-second drop passing like long hours spent staring up at the sky. Only the sky was at his feet, inky blackness tugging and pulling at his descent like hands at his ankles. Anxiety rushed forwards as the dragon called out in its mighty voice, roar swallowed by the unknowable future that lay on the other side.

Was it dark?

Was it light?

Was there anything there at all?

Was there colour?

Was there sound?

Was there civilization?

All was quiet. All was dark. All was warm.

And then it wasn’t.

_prologue._

Dream staggered to his feet, breaths entering his chest involuntarily. Solid ground - brick, the bubbling of lava, overwhelming heat, the taste of metal, the scent of smoke; home. His compass slowed its mad spinning, pointing calmly south-east as his clock resumed its usual ticking. A place where time made sense, where the counting of hours was smooth, where days passed in minutes instead of in hours.

Home.

A small gasp caught on the edges of his ringing ears, and from the corner of his mask, he saw the figure that had stared at him mere moments before leaving; skin speckled like the milky way, purple of his eyes humming with unsung melodies and stories that demanded a stage, a curiosity that Dream hadn’t seen before.

Fear.

Their shadows danced with each other in an unfamiliar game of push and pull, the other’s eyes burning in the fire of uncertainty. Dream had been there once - this world, unfamiliar warmth and cold, terror in the nights when you first arrived. He’d been there.

Dream offered his hand.

A tentative hand reached out in return.

A universal language was the smile.

There was light. 

There was sound.

There was something here.

**Author's Note:**

> haha "end" notes  
> once again, video blogging rpf is bs  
> enjoy my take on ranboo's backstory! i really enjoy ranboo's character, and wanted to do something with it!
> 
> also yes i know i took some liberties with how the end portal actually works, but cut me some slack here  
> also also ?? in-character dream banning the End because he nearly died there pog ?


End file.
